The questions I asked in post 4 paragraph 4 were meant to be about high rise buildings you work in, not the building that was on fire.
Ok
Wonder what sort of fireworks can set an entire building on fire? One floor maybe, not several. These would have been outside not on the roof. So they must have broken several windows. Then burnt materials that were inside. The police should have been empowered to arrest those setting them off before the accident happened.
According to the article linked, these were large industrial fireworks (not something you'd buy from the corner store), quite high power. Also according to several articles, there were a lot of highly flammable materials inside as part of the construction (what kind? I don't know). And yes, it wasn't on the roof...it was on the ground outside the building (I was wrong in that part of my theory).
Not even any need to break windows...since the building was
still under construction, the upper portion still had areas that were not complete.
And the police? Dude, this is a city of 13 million people, that was literally being inundated with fireworks. Its part of Chinese New Year! Its not like there was this one place with fireworks, and the cops could say, "Hey, lets go and see what those people are doing!". There are fireworks
everywhere, and pretty much non-stop. The police certainly were "empowered" to arrest them...they just wouldn't of had any way to tell that, out of the literally millions of
legal fireworks being set off across the city, that this particular one was
illegal.
A CCTV executive decided to put on a 'special' fireworks show, and hired a local fireworks company to put on a high power display. He did not get the necessary permits and clearances before doing so (and he's sure as hell going to get a
lot of $&% over his decision).
Do not think it very relevant what company built the building, companies need only build to local standards.
It is relevant when both the architect and the company in question have built famous buildings around the world, and have a high reputation for both quality and safety. Obviously, something went wrong this time...but I rather doubt that the fault will be with the builder.
Yeah, there are a lot of things that, in an ideal world, would be different. But it ain't an ideal world. Fire suppression systems were shut down in an incompleted building (due to the danger of being set off by construction activities); industrial fireworks (really just very large packages of explosives) were set off right beside the building, and somehow one or more of them got inside the building. In an environment where the entire city was being carpeted with fireworks, there was little or nothing that police could do to stop/prevent this.
Ironically, for many years, Beijing had strict laws preventing the use of fireworks within city limits, specifically because of the danger of starting fires. A few years ago they rescinded those laws. I predict that we're gonna' see them brought back into effect now.
), the restoration is now in full swing.